Interrupted Lullaby

“Turn left here. You can pull into the driveway at the end of the road,” he said.

She did so, not sure whether she was glad or sorry that they had arrived at his apartment building. The street was a steep one, leading down to the harbor foreshore, with the city ferry terminal only a short stroll away. In front of them was a swathe of parkland, then the water sparkling like black velvet strewn with diamonds. Zeke explained that his apartment occupied the entire ground floor of the old Federation terrace house that had been converted into a duplex. The view must be sensational, she thought.

“Nice place,” she commented tensely.

“It came with my new job,” he said. “Would you like to take a look at the view?”

“I can see it perfectly well from here.”

“Scared, Tara?”

His softly voiced challenge was all it took. She wasn’t scared of him, nor of her ability to deal with the situation. In comparison with what she’d been through since he’d left, Zeke Blaxland was a piece of cake. “Very well, but I won’t stay long. I’m starting on a book, and the only time I get to work on it is early in the morning.”

“About the foundation?” he guessed. She nodded. “You always said you wanted to write, but I thought it was going to be a torrid romance.”

She was painfully aware that the vision had been fueled by their affair. This time she would have to look somewhere else for inspiration. “I changed my mind,” she said flatly.

“Pity. But I’m glad you’re following your dream.”

She could say the same for him. According to the same media grapevine from which she had learned about his marriage, Zeke’s column was now published in a dozen countries in several languages. He also did an op-ed piece on a national morning television show. She had first seen it in hospital after the baby was born and it had almost been her undoing. But after a year or more of being confronted with his image everywhere she turned, she was immune to the effect, or so she tried to assure herself.

Liar, she taunted herself silently. She would never be immune to the sight of Zeke on television or anywhere else. She had only to glance sideways to remind herself of how vulnerable she still was to his brand of charm. Charisma was an overused word, but he had it in spades.

Even when she looked resolutely away, his presence radiated toward her like a beacon. You’re a moth to his flame, she told herself scathingly, forcing herself to remember what happened to moths when they flew too close to the light. It didn’t stop her from getting out of the car, locking it and following him inside.

She might have known his apartment would be spectacular. He never did anything by halves. From a plant-filled atrium, he led her into a vast living area furnished with Corbusier chairs and sofa separated by a mirrored coffee table. Her high heels clicked against the white Italian tiles covering the floors.

Beyond the living room, a dining area contained a fruitwood table surrounded by a dozen rope-seated chairs. A handcrafted boat sat atop a trestle side table, and above it a brass mirror was angled to reflect the view. Kelim rugs and softer natural elements, terracotta pots and baskets of plants, relieved the coolness of the tiled floors.

“It’s lovely,” she admitted, impressed in spite of herself. Home-making hadn’t been among Zeke’s inclinations when they were together. His previous apartment had been beautifully but impersonally furnished by the simple means of buying several room lots complete with accessories from a fashionable furnishing store. This apartment was another matter. It exuded a feeling of home that she wasn’t accustomed to associating with Zeke. “Did you hire someone, or is this your own work?”

“A bit of both,” he conceded. “I had good advice, but I knew what I wanted.”

He usually did. She accepted the glass of sparkling spring water he offered her, foolishly pleased that he had remembered she never drank when she was driving. It bothered her to think she might be what he wanted, because she already knew how hard it would be to refuse him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, only that she had to. Having ridden the emotional roller coaster with him once before, she’d be crazy to climb aboard it again.

She tensed as he moved up behind her, but it was only to steer her closer to the spectacular view. His hands on her shoulders felt warm, strong. A molten sensation flowed along the length of her spine and pooled beneath the curve of her stomach.

“You wouldn’t believe how much I missed this.”

She found her voice with an effort. “The harbor view?”

He turned her again until he was looking directly into her eyes. “This view.”

The raw emotion in his gaze made it clear the harbor wasn’t in the race. She had half expected it, she told herself, forcing herself not to move. It was the test she had set herself by agreeing to come with him.

When she said nothing, he began to massage her shoulders with gentle but persuasive movements until she wanted to melt. “No comment, Tara?”

She shook her head. “It is the approved journalistic phrase.”

He frowned. “In my experience it’s used by people who have something to hide.”

She jerked away from his hands as if stung. He couldn’t know her secret, but conscience made her react. Or else it was the unnerving effect of his nearness. Both, she suspected. She was mad to put herself through this. As a test of her indifference to him, it was already a failure.

He studied her intently. “What is it, Tara? Did I say something?”

She fought the urge to wrap her arms protectively around herself, and walked to the wall of windows looking onto a vast terrace. The view might as well have been painted on for all the impact it had on her. She was far more aware of the man behind her. “This wasn’t a good idea.”

“On the contrary. It’s the only good idea I’ve had in a long time.”

Turn and face him now, or you never will, she commanded herself, but found it almost impossible to do. Almost as hard to say lightly, “Am I hearing things? Zeke Blaxland is a positive fountain of good ideas.”

“You know I was speaking personally.”

As much to remind herself as him, she said, “Not an area I have a right to go into.”

His gaze hardened. “Because you don’t feel anything for me anymore, or because you do?”

How did one answer the unanswerable? She picked up her bag and started for the door, but he was there before her. “You can’t leave yet. I asked you a question.”

“I can leave anytime I please,” she said, not at all sure that it was true.

He saw it, too, she noted, and pressed home his advantage. “Tell me to go to hell right now, and I’ll know I’m wasting my time. I won’t bother you again, ever.”

“You’ll stop investigating the foundation?”

He shook his head. “Not until I get what I came for, but I guarantee I’ll be a model observer. You won’t even know I’m around.”

And the sun didn’t have to rise in the morning. As long as Zeke walked the earth she would be aware of him. In the same room, she could no more ignore him than she could fly. “It won’t work,” she denied, her hair haloing around her head as she shook it. “You’d find some way to make your presence felt.”

“You make me sound like a glory-hunter,” he said, sounding wounded. “But you’re probably right, it is a big ask. However, there’s another solution.”

“What is it?”

“We make love here and now, and get it out of our system.”

His so-called solution was so typically Zeke that she almost choked. “What makes you think that will solve anything?”

His smile was infuriatingly cocky. “Maybe it won’t, but it’s a lot more fun than standing at the door, arguing all night.”

Too late, she remembered that Zeke thought falling into bed could solve any argument. Unfortunately, he had been right more often than she cared to remember. But not anymore. “Sorry, Zeke, I’m otherwise committed.”

His eyes narrowed. “Committed as in another man? The same man who kept you from coming to America with me?”

“There was no one else then and there isn’t now,” she said tiredly. “Given the complications that go with being in love, I’ve decided I’m better off celibate.”

She saw no point in letting him know she had been since he’d left. Pregnancy had imposed its own limitations, but in truth no other man had interested her since Zeke. Whatever his failings, he was a tough act to follow.

Evidently you weren’t, she told herself. He hadn’t waited long before rushing into another relationship. Pain blistered through her. Jealousy. Anger. Other emotions she refused to identify. All of it on a level only Zeke aroused in her. Still did, she recognized in panic. She had to get out of here.

He read the urge to flee in her startled movements. “What’s so all-fired important you have to rush home to it?”

“My life.”

“Your writing and your precious foundation?”

When she nodded dumbly, he looked skeptical. “Can they keep you warm at night, Tara? Can they enfold you in love and comfort the way my arms can? Like this?”

Before she had time to martial her defenses, he took her in his arms. She tried to stiffen but it was useless. He knew exactly how to hold her to turn her to putty in his embrace. Almost of their own accord her arms went around him. As soon as her fingers traced the muscular contours of his back she knew she was lost. For eighteen months she had dreamed of being right here, resting her head against the hollow of his shoulder and feeling the steady drumming of his heart reverberating through her.

Except that it wasn’t steady at all. It beat as rapid a tattoo as hers did, as his lips traced a pattern along her hairline then descended with lightning swiftness to claim her mouth. “Now tell me again how you prefer celibacy,” he insisted.

The moan she heard escape from her throat was part passion and part despair. Why did he have to come back just when she was getting her life back on track? She didn’t blame him for the baby. The doctor said her contraception had failed during a bout of flu, so it was nobody’s fault. But she did blame Zeke for rushing off to the States without a backward glance after she refused to go with him. She hadn’t been ready to tell him about the baby then, but she would have, given a little more time. Instead, he had slammed the door shut on further communication.

She had wanted to break the news in a way that made it clear he didn’t owe her anything. Knowing how he resisted family ties because of his own chaotic childhood, she wouldn’t have imposed them on him. Barely recovered from the flu, she hadn’t bargained on feeling so wretchedly ill in the first weeks of pregnancy, unable to deal with her own emotions, far less Zeke’s.

By the time she was ready, he had gone without leaving a forwarding address. She could have contacted him through the newspaper but it wasn’t a message she had wanted to risk falling into the wrong hands, so she had decided against it. Thinking she would never see Zeke again, it didn’t seem to matter. Now she wasn’t so sure.

The thought didn’t stop her body from responding of its own accord. After so long, his touch shocked her system into overdrive. Every inch of exposed skin felt alive in a way that terrified her. He was right, celibacy had nothing to compare with the way he made her feel.

It didn’t help to remind herself that forever wasn’t in his vocabulary. He was here. Nothing mattered except the demands he made on her mouth as his hands roved over her body, exploring, pleasuring, exciting. As he eased her jacket open and slid his hand inside, her heart almost stopped. When she felt him cup her breast, she went weak. She moaned again, shifting closer to him to press his hand against the spot where he would feel her rapid heartbeat.

He was aroused, too, she felt as their altered positions made it apparent. Seeing how quickly she had made him want her brought her senses close to overload. How could she have forgotten what they were like together?

She hadn’t forgotten for one single moment, she understood in the instant, eye-of-the-storm moment she had for clear thinking. She had accepted his invitation knowing what would happen. Wanting it. Wanting him.

His tongue began a sinuous dance with hers, sending spears of sensation lancing through her. She wanted to deny everything he made her feel, but the words stalled inside her, unable to compete with the way her heart pumped in erratic rhythm, hazing her mind and filling her with yearnings. As they kissed, he massaged her nipples, sending her into a spiral of desire that could end in only one way. “Oh, Zeke, it’s been so long,” she heard herself murmur.

“Too long,” he said in a voice like broken glass. “I want to make love to you.”

It was enough to break the spell. “No, Zeke.” She placed a hand against his chest, the gesture too ineffectual to push him away but symbolic enough that he understood her meaning. Self-preservation was the only thing urging her to refuse him. He knew every inch of her body as well as she knew it herself. He was bound to notice the changes in her and ask questions.

Questions she was far from ready to answer.

She found she ached to say yes more than she had wanted to do anything for a long time. To know the mind-shattering pleasure of his possession and to surrender utterly to his will, even as she commanded him, was a heaven she had dreamed of all the time they’d been apart.

Not that she hadn’t tried to put him out of her mind. Awake, she had almost succeeded. About her dreams she could do nothing. Instead of dulling her need for him, the long months of abstinence had sharpened her desire until it registered as an exquisite pleasure-pain sensation that ached to be satisfied.

But not tonight.

Not ever, if she had any sense. Her breath escaped in a sigh of frustration. When had she shown any sense around Zeke? This time she had little choice, she thought as she closed her jacket with shaking fingers and took an unsteady step away from him. It was only a few inches, but it felt like a vast gulf of emptiness opening between them.

“Am I going too fast for you?” he asked, sounding as strained as she felt.

If you could count the months of abstinence as fast, she thought ruefully. “No, it’s just…I don’t know how I feel about us anymore.”

His expression turned cold. “As I recall, you never did.”

The accusation in his tone shocked her out of her remaining torpor. “I wasn’t the one who went away and found someone else.”

Light broke across his strong features. She had forgotten the full force of his attractiveness, she thought distractedly. His dark hair was thick and full, curling slightly at the ends where it wanted a barber’s touch. In anger, his eyes looked like the sea in storm but the glint of gold reminded her of how they could sparkle wickedly at her, usually just before they made love. She closed her own eyes against the reminder. It would be a long time before she saw that look again, if ever.

“Is that what this is about?” he demanded, sounding furious. “It’s okay for you to send me away but not for me to find comfort somewhere else. What was I supposed to do? Wait until you made up your mind that I was worth making a few temporary sacrifices for? Or did you hope I’d come rushing back, unable to exist without you?”

Both options had occurred to her. Evidently only one of them to him. She dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing it. Her scalp felt tight and tense, good company for the rest of her. “I didn’t want anything from you that you weren’t prepared to offer freely, and I still don’t. You did the right thing finding someone else. I’m only sorry it didn’t last.” Then she wouldn’t have to deal with this.

Instead she would have to deal with knowing he was forever beyond her reach. She wasn’t sure which was the worse torment.

“Well, I did come back,” he said, startling her. “I tried moving on and it didn’t work. You can’t give to one person something you’ve already given to another, and Lucy sensed it. I decided to come back and find out if you felt the same way about me. Was I wrong?”

Say yes and end this now, she urged herself. Instead, what came out was a lame, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you still care about me?”

He sounded so bitter that she wanted to weep. She kept her head high. When their baby died she had shed all the tears in the world for their child, for him and for herself. She had thought she had no tears left. Now, feeling her eyes grow heavy, she knew she did, but shedding them in front of him would be far too revealing. To herself or to him? The question caught her off guard, silencing her until she realized he was waiting for an answer.

“We can’t pick up where we left off,” she said with an honesty he couldn’t possibly understand. There were too many layers under what he thought he heard.

His generous mouth tightened into a hard line. “Can we pick up at all?”

“No.”

She hadn’t intended to be so forthright, but survival demanded it. If she said so much as another word, she would break down and admit that there was more than a chance. After what she had experienced in his arms tonight there was a bedrock certainty. And it was a luxury she couldn’t afford. One night with him would undo all the months of silence.

How could she tell him she had conceived and lost their baby? How would he react to being excluded from something he had every right to expect to share? Even now, she had trouble justifying it to herself. No matter how difficult he had made it, or how ill she had been at the beginning, she should have found a way to tell him. Now it was too late. Would he even believe the child had been his? He had been ready enough to blame her refusal to come with him on another man. She wasn’t sure he believed her denials even now.

There was only one thing she could do. It cost her almost more courage than she possessed to retrieve her bag and touch a hand to the side of his face in silent homage to what might have been. “Goodbye, Zeke,” she said, and made herself walk through the door.

Chapter 3

Three days later, Tara knew she had done the right thing in walking away from Zeke, but couldn’t make herself feel good about it. She was babysitting for her sister-in-law, Carol, when the sound of the front door opening and closing told her that her sister-in-law had returned. Carol came into the room and dropped her briefcase on a side table. “Children asleep?”

“Finally.” Tara’s tone suggested it was an achievement.

Carol gave a wry smile. “I hope they didn’t give you too hard a time.”

“Of course not,” Tara assured her. “Cole might be at the Terrible Two stage, but he always makes me laugh. And Katie’s so sweet, calling me Tawa through the gap in her teeth. How can you refuse them anything?”

“I remind myself it’s for their own good.” Carol paused at the kitchen door. “Join me for lunch?”

Tara nodded. “I’m seeing a publisher this afternoon and having dinner with a potential benefactor for the foundation, but I’m free till then.”

“Another schmoozy dinner. How do you stand spending so much time with people whose only attractive feature is their bank balance?”

“It isn’t always the case. Some of them are sweet, and when it’s for the kids, it’s worth it,” Tara said.

“We’ve never really discussed it, but it can’t be easy for you, dealing with children every day. Even minding mine must be a strain.”

Tara let out a long sigh. “When I’m bathing them or playing with them, I sometimes feel such a longing for what might have been. Then I think how lucky I am to be an aunt to your two. They help in the healing process.”

“Children are like that,” Carol conceded, adding realistically, “especially when they’re asleep.”

“Then they’re positive angels,” Tara agreed, laughing.

“I don’t know why dramas always have to coincide with the nanny’s day off,” Carol went on. “Although if Mrs. McCarthy changes her will one more time, I swear I’ll hasten her end myself.”

Tara laughed. Her sister-in-law was a lawyer who had set up a practice at home while her children were young. The client in question was bedridden, but still feisty enough to enjoy the power her fortune gave her over her family. According to Carol, the woman changed her will at regular intervals to keep her clan under her thumb.

Tara perched on a stool and watched Carol prepare sandwiches with practiced ease. Her sister-in-law was one of six children, all younger than herself, so she was incredibly domesticated. She was also a good friend. Tara’s brother, Ben, reminded her frequently, that marrying Carol was an example of his dedication to pleasing his little sister.

Pleasing himself had nothing to do with it, she thought with humor. Ben was a doctor and had met Carol professionally when she defended a colleague in a malpractice lawsuit. Love at first sight, Ben had called it, when he wasn’t claiming he chose Carol so he’d have his own private lawyer on tap. Tara knew which reason she believed.

“This is the first chance I’ve had to ask you how Monday’s talk went?” her sister-in-law said, levering the top off a mustard jar.

Tara traced a pattern on the granite counter. “The usual.”

Carol’s hands stilled. “No matter how many times you do this, you never describe it as usual. In fact you assure me every presentation is different. So out with it, what’s the problem this time?”

“Zeke Blaxland is investigating the work of the foundation.”

Carol caught her breath. She knew about Zeke and had been incredibly supportive during Tara’s pregnancy and the shattering aftermath. Other than Tara’s doctor, her brother and sister-in-law had been the only two people Tara had confided in.

Tara knew that Carol still felt badly about being out of Australia when the baby was born, but the family had been in England, settling Carol’s elderly mother into a retirement place. They had flown back as soon as they could, but it was too late. Tara had assured Carol she understood. Their presence wouldn’t have changed the outcome. And they had supported her through everything else, including the baby’s memorial service. Carol had shed almost as many tears as Tara herself, and had held Tara’s hand through the days that followed.

Now she frowned in sympathy. “Oh, honey, how awful. Did you hate him on sight?”

Tara laced and unlaced her fingers until she regained her voice. “Worse than that, I didn’t hate him.”

Carol covered Tara’s hand with her own. “You didn’t do anything foolish?”

Tara knew her laugh sounded hollow. “You mean like go home with him and let him make love to me? Does one out of two count?”

Reading between the lines, Carol shook her head. “Sounds like your sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time.”

What self-preservation? Tara asked herself. Zeke had been in her audience for only a few hours before she’d thrown caution to the wind and driven him home. She hadn’t been reckless enough to go to bed with him, although it was close. But he still managed to dominate her waking thoughts. Her dreaming ones, too, she had discovered, only in her dream they had been a family of three. This morning she awoke with tears drying on her cheeks.

“I didn’t have him figured as the charitable type,” Carol said.

“He isn’t. He’s writing a series of columns about charities that help themselves more than the people they’re set up to help.”

Carol looked shocked. “He must know the foundation is genuine or you wouldn’t be involved.”

Tara nodded. Carol knew that after ending her relationship with Zeke and losing the baby, Tara hadn’t wanted to face the world at all, far less be involved in a cause that brought her into daily contact with young children. She hadn’t wanted to return to modeling, either, so had retreated behind closed doors to lick her emotional wounds.

But the storm of publicity surrounding her efforts to help the single parent with the triplets had refused to abate. Gradually she had been drawn into similar projects until it had become a full-time job.